


The Diving Bell

by lmeden



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Inception Big Bang, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-27
Updated: 2012-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-30 04:40:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lmeden/pseuds/lmeden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dom doesn't think he has a choice - it is either leave Saito to die, or remain in Limbo to search for his lost soul - so he stays in the dreaming. But in the end, a choice is the only thing Dom has left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Diving Bell

**Author's Note:**

> This is the story I've always wanted to write for Inception. The first time I watched the movie I saw the glance that Dom and Saito exchanged when they woke on the plane and I thought, "What happened? How did Dom find him? What sort of odyssey was it?" I'm glad I've finally had the opportunity and inspiration to write it down. Thanks go to my wonderful beta hesselives, who is always inspiring and who hasn't read the end, so I do hope she likes it. Also, a huge thank you to my amazing artist [exhaledtroop](http://exhaledtroop.livejournal.com), who more than did this story justice. Her art is everything I could have dreamed of. 
> 
> Also posted at livejournal [here](http://leavesogold.livejournal.com/2610.html).

  


_He walks away from the city_ , but his mind is filled with thoughts of her and he can’t rid himself of the feeling that her hand still curls in his and her eyes stare into his, so he sighs, concentrates, and the city crumbles in silence behind him. 

Gone. She can’t haunt him if the city that they built and loved is no more. A shadow passes over him. When he looks up, the bright sky is clear. 

The asphalt has begun to chip underneath his feet. He turns his eyes away from the growing cracks, because at a glance he can see that nothingness lies within, and he knows it is dangerous to stare into the void for more than an instant. 

The road crumbles into dirt, and then sand, and he finds himself back on the beach. It has remained the same. Sand shifts and grinds underneath his feet as if the beach is suddenly real and he staggers, grasping hold of a boulder for balance. He glances down; the black asphalt is gone, and he cannot see the void between the grains of sand. The crash of waves is loud in his ears.

What now? Sea foam rushes up to Dom’s toes, and he takes a step back. His mind is rusty and slow, and dim panic flares within. He takes a deep breath and straightens. He has to keep his goal in mind, or Limbo will take control. He can’t lose himself down here – not again. 

He turns around. The land that once carried an unending city has disappeared under the sea. He is standing on an island. 

Dom frowns, brow furrowing as he looks around. He hasn’t manipulated Limbo, chosen to make this land an island as he chose to banish the city. Limbo changed on its own. The reality – or surreality – of the situation hits him in the pit of his stomach.

Without thinking, he decides, and crouches, reaching out and pulling handfuls of wet sand towards him. He begins to build. He pulls the threads of Limbo together and shapes it in his grasp. As he piles the sand up, he feels the soft pressure of her hand on his shoulder. It is gentle, not fierce, and Dom knows that if he turned to look she would be smiling. He leans into her. 

 

 

 

 _The boat_ bobs in the rolling surf.

The sand boat, the miniature model, falls to pieces as he stands and steps through its remains. The wooden one remains. He can still manipulate Limbo, then. Dom nods to himself. It means he can find a way out once he finds Saito. 

He strides across the sand and into the sea, gritting his teeth against the shock of the cold water soaking through his clothes. He grasps the side of the boat, but it heaves against him. He stumbles backwards. 

Surging forward, Dom tries again, pulling the edge of the boat and jumping up, just managing to get himself over the side and feeling too old for this already. He fetches up against a bench and slams his elbow against the hull. Pain leaps through him and he hisses, growling at it and curling inwards. He reaches out and forces himself upright. 

It’s hard to move, with the boat bucking like it is. He tries to walk but stumbles nearly over the side; walking will be impossible unless he finds becalmed waters. He considers rowing away from the surf, then looks around and fails to find oars, so he stands, dripping, and takes a deep breath, fortified by a better idea. 

Dom closes his eyes, wreaking further havoc with his balance, leans his head back, and stretches. His fingers touch a cool breeze, and underneath them the wind shifts. He tugs. 

And the sea surges under the boat, carrying them both up with a dizzying suddenness, slamming him down onto his knees, and then the wave recedes and carries them out to sea. 

The island recedes with a frightening rapidity and Dom’s hair tumbles around his eyes. He shoves it back and twists, letting the winds and waves loose, and the surge calms. The boat slows and settles. Fondly, he wraps his fingers around her side in a caress. 

Dom slips his other hand into his jacket pocket and touches cold, wet metal. The sea shifts, its mood turning in some imperceptible way that he feels on his skin, and Dom looks up into Limbo’s dark sky.

Thick, heavy clouds. Storm clouds. Shocked, Dom leans back, grasping wood with numb fingers. The clouds surge across the sky, visibly roiling as they bear down on him. 

Whose projections are they?

It is the only thought (wild though it is) Dom has time for before the storm hits and sends his tiny boat careening. He slams against the side, gaping as his breath whooshes out of him. A wave crashes over him and he slides down into the boat, choking and sputtering. 

His ribs ache; when he tries to look up he is blinded by the rain. It fills his mouth and eyes. Dom turns over, trying to shield his face and grasping at the bench. The boat slides back and forth over the waves and dimly, Dom hears the wood groan. 

He gasps again, inhaling water and coughing. Salty water floods his mouth and Dom realizes that he is in the sea. He closes his mouth and pushes against the water, swimming upwards or what he thinks is up. He breaks the surface and forces his eyes open. He catches a glimpse of his boat, upside down and floating away, and tries to swim towards it, awkward and heavy in his clothes. 

The water around him tightens and pulls him under. 

Dom smothers a breath and struggles, clawing around him against the current that has caught him and is dragging him down. His heart pounds and his lungs scream, and he realizes that Limbo itself is trying to destroy him. He clenches Limbo and tears at it. The sea let him go and he surges back to the surface.

His breathing is heavy and choked; he inhales half air and half water. The storm is eerily silent; rain plonks as it hits waves and wind whistles, nothing else. Dom is exhausted. His muscles aches and he wants nothing more than steady ground underneath his feet.

He clenches his teeth and leans back, relaxing on top of the waves, and lets the sea carry him away.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_He dreamt she was leaning over him_ , the corners of her eyes creased in concern, but when he wakes he sees it isn’t Mal at all, just a young boy with dark hair and wide eyes, who smiles a bright, surprising smile as Dom squints confusedly at him. The boy leans closer, so Dom’s eyes nearly cross trying to see properly, and he says something incomprehensible in a high voice. Dom blinks.

The boy speaks again, and this time Dom feels like he can almost understand. The boy is speaking Japanese, which Dom does recognize but doesn’t speak, and oddly enough it sounds like the boy is saying…

 _Well, did you see any mermaids?_

“Mermaids,” Dom mutters. 

The boy bounces up to his knees and his smile grows. He begins babbling again, and it is so strange, because Dom can tell that he’s speaking Japanese, can actually hear the physical words, but the meaning seems as clear to him as if he’s developed an internal translator and it’s only just kicking in. 

_Oh good, you did see them, I knew you had to, no one washes up on beaches without seeing at least one mermaid, or merman, which one was it, was she pretty?_ the boy prattles, disregarding completely Dom’s confusion. 

Dom has never seen this dreamscape before. At a quick glance, it seems to be a long stretch of beach, with barren dunes beyond. There is no city, as he is accustomed to. This cannot be his dream anymore. 

He swallows his questions. “I didn’t see any mermaids.”

Apparently the boy can understand him, too, because his mouth twists. _Not one? I don’t believe you. What about a sea witch?_ He leans forward, chewing at his lip.

Dom raises an eyebrow, warming up to the boy. He reminds him of James, only older and more articulate. He has that little boy madness that so frustrates adults and mystifies them. Dom rolls up to his feet and sways a bit on the sand. He looks down at the crouching boy and raises his eyebrows. 

“Well? Show me the beach, will you?”

The boy blinks up at him, face round and blank like the moon in the bright light, then bounds to his feet and away. 

_Come on!_ he calls back. _I’ll show you the best places to find shells, magic ones that will help us find your witch._

Dom strides after him, hands in his pockets. 

The beach is golden; sand a mixture of yellow and brown and white, sparkling as Dom walks. It looks like the booty from a thousand pirate ships has smashed to bits and washed up here. Where the sand is wet and the boy’s footprints are eroding under the surf, the sand turns dark, and in Dom’s shadow it looks almost red. 

He looks back to the boy, slim and dark in the distance, and picks up his pace. 

The waves are soft, nearly soundless. The water is green and blue and shades of all sorts of cold things: the silver shine off the back of a fish, the quick glimmer of iridescence in the ocean’s darkest depths. This beach is unreal. It is fantastic in the basest sense, built of dreams and imagination and hope. 

It has not come from his own mind, Dom is sure of that. He is too old, too experienced to imagine something like this and make it real. For years, all he has been able to create are mimicries of reality. 

He looks back at the boy, his gaze intense and wide, his lips parted with enthusiasm. The boy. This must be his dream, his youthful, flamboyant imaginings. He’s the only other living thing here, it must be him. 

But who is he? Limbo can only be shaped by a living dreamer and the only dreamers in Limbo are Dom…and Saito. He watches the boy slow and stop, bend to pick something up. This boy must be Saito, but how?

In Dom’s experience, dreamers always remain themselves (except forgers, of course, but Dom generally avoids thinking about the defiant ball of contradictions that makes Eames who he is). Dom has always been his own age, wearing his own clothes and with his own face – even Ariadne, young, unsure, and inexperienced, remained herself when she fell into Limbo. 

Is Saito so lost that he has forgotten even himself?

 _This is it!_ the boy exclaims, breaking into Dom’s thoughts. _See this shell, it comes from the darkest depths of the sea, you can tell by the color._

Dom leans down and takes the shell from him, admiring the violet sheen it carries, despite the bleaching light. 

_And this one floated on the very tops of the waves to get here, you know, but when you hold both together…_

The boy reaches out, holding a shell almost pure gold and quite translucent, and nestles it against the one in Dom’s hand. They fit together like pieces of a puzzle, creating one large, round shell, shimmering with the most unexpected colors. Dom’s breath catches and he looks up. The boy’s gaze is pleased. 

_Amazing, right? You know, it proves that sea witches and mermaids exist, if there’s this kind of magic hiding in the water, just waiting for us to put the clues together._

Dom cups the shells in his hands, holding them together and whole, glimmering.

 _And one day, this will all be mine,_ the boy says, gesturing out towards the water.

“What do you mean?”

 _Oh, well, I’m going to be a businessman, father says, and well,_ the boy’s nose wrinkles with distaste and despite his fascination with the story, Dom smiles, _if I have to, I’m going to be the very best and that means that I’ll own the entire world, even the seas and the mermaids and the witches. And I won’t hurt them! No, all the stories have the mermaids evil and defeated by a hero but I’m not a hero, I just want to watch them, and maybe say hello._

He turns, and looks up at Dom’s smiling face. Dom’s heart feels very full, not with pain but with happiness, it is the first time in a very long while that he has felt this way, and this is Saito blinking up at him, talking about mermaids and ruling the world. It’s crazy, impossible, and breathtaking. 

_You think I’m crazy, don’t you? Everyone does._ His tone is quiet, full of resignation and stubbornness. Dom leans down, laying the shells gently on the sand and looking in the boy’s, Saito’s, eyes. 

“I don’t think you’re crazy. I think that you’re going to get all of that, and more. In fact, I know it.”

_Know it?_

“Absolutely. I can promise you that.”

Saito looks at him. Dom tries to smile, but finds it failing in the face of Saito’s seriousness. 

“Can I prove it to you?” He almost bites his tongue as the words pop out, because how can he prove it? How can he possibly explain that he knows the man this young Saito will grow to be?

_No, thank you. We’ll just have to see._

He reaches out and grabs Dom’s hand. _Come on._

Dom is coming to see that Saito hasn’t lost himself at all. He has found another part of himself – something that, if asked, Dom would have answered he thought that Saito had never had – that he buried a long time ago.

“What now?” As they walk away from the shells and up onto dry sand, Dom wonders what Saito is thinking, what he is planning. 

Saito only shrugs at Dom’s question and drags him up the dunes to the place where the sand begins to turn into grass and flops down, spread flat and looking straight upwards. Dom lowers himself, much more slowly, and looks up as well. 

The sky of Limbo is, as usual, bright and featureless. There are no clouds and no sun – nothing. It is as if a dome has been constructed over the dreamers, at once caging them in and serving as a foundation for the higher dream levels. Dom had wondered, once, whether if he squinted hard enough at the sky, stared long enough, he would see Arthur’s footprints, or Eames’, traipsing through dreams but never falling through the cracks into Limbo like Dom has. 

And Saito. Dom rolls his head to the side to look at the boy next to him. 

He’s a small, slight boy. His dark pants and jacket seem almost too big on him, and Dom can see the beginning of weary circles under his eyes. So young. His hair is loose and twines with the sand, golden specks of which cling to his cheekbones. 

“Do you do this every day?”

Saito’s eyes are wide, his lips parted when he turns. _Do what?_

“This. Lie here, staring at the sky and finding mermaid shells in the sand.”

_No, I wish I could, but I have to go to school. Every day I have off for vacation, though, I come here. It’s my favorite place in all the world._

“Really? How did you find it?” Dom doesn’t want to upset Saito, but he needs to know what the boy remembers of his other life. 

_I don’t know, I just found it one day. Like everything else, I just found it, and kept coming back. Right? Isn’t that how you find everything?_

Dom swallows, but doesn’t admit defeat in the face of the boy’s innocent wisdom. “Did your father bring you here?”

_Father never brings me anywhere except the office._

“What about your mother?”

 _She’s gone. I don’t remember her, but father tells me about her sometimes. She was beautiful, I’ve seen the pictures._

Dom looks away and down the pale contour of the beach, struck by his own memories of Phillipa and James. Will they grow up like this, so fey and alone? Will he ever be able to tell them about their own mother and how beautiful she was?

Long moments pass, and Dom resists the urge to glance back at Saito. What now? What can he ask? He reaches up and buries his hand in his own hair, tugging as he thinks. The sound of the surf crashing down grows louder and fills his ears. Up above, the sky glows. Dom closes his eyes, but can’t shut the light out. 

He sits up and looks down at Saito. The boy’s eyes are drooping, his blinks growing slower. Almost asleep. A question leaps out at him, from all the others. 

“Have you ever been on a plane, Saito?”

His eyes focus briefly. _No._

“Do you want to?”

 _Oh yes, it would be amazing. To fly over everything and look down on the entire world, cities as small as ants, wouldn’t that be wonderful?_ His eyes track across the sky, looking at something that Dom can’t see. 

Dom’s heart breaks a little and his hand comes down, brushing gently over the top of Saito’s head, through his soft, fine hair and grains of sand. The sleepy smile Saito sends him is a wonder. 

Then he jerks, sitting up and turning to look over the dunes. _I have to go!_ He scrambles to his feet begins to run. 

Dom begins to stand, confused. He hadn’t heard anything. The only sound had been the rush of waves. Did Saito hear something? What had prompted this? As he finally gains his feet, Saito turns and runs back, knocking into him with a force that almost sends him sprawling again and wrapping himself around Dom in a ferocious hug. 

Dom lays his hands on Saito’s shoulder, then gently hugs the boy back. Saito looks up and smiles. 

_Thank you for washing up on this beach, Mr. Mermaid._ Then he turns and runs off, across the dunes. 

Dom watches him go, shading his eyes and squinting. There is a figure in the distance, which Saito runs up to and stops by. They are both so far away that Dom can’t see a thing other than their silhouettes, but the taller one seems feminine. 

She reaches out, takes Saito’s hand, and they begin to walk away. 

Briefly, she reminds him of Mal. Dom opens his mouth to call out, but her name is caught in his throat. He remembers Mal’s desperate face, and his own utter certainty of what he had to do so that she would die. That they would both have to die. 

He imagines holding his gun now, and feels its sudden weight heavy in its holster. He shifts to check – yes, it really is there. Has it been with him all along?

He imagines holding the gun to Saito’s head, looking into that little boy’s eyes, and shooting him. Would Saito fall, his body heavy and real? Or would he dissolve, and Limbo dissolve with him, taking Dom’s mind with it?

Dom feels sick to his stomach. He can’t do that. He just can’t, not to a child, he can’t kill him. It doesn’t matter that Saito isn’t really a child, because right now he _is_ a child, in body and mind, and it’s all so sickening that Dom stops thinking. He reaches back and lifts his jacket, grasps his gun and strides down the beach. When the first waves begin to lick at his shoes he stops and heaves the gun over his shoulder, out into the water. It vanishes. 

He paces the beach, hand hovering over his mouth. He’ll find another way. He will free Saito from this prison, restore him to himself, but he _won’t_ kill him. 

Dom looks up the beach, over the dunes, but they are gone. Will this beach begin to collapse, since its dreamer has gone? He glances around but the beach shows no sign of erosion. 

The waves lap up and around Dom’s feet. He looks towards the dunes. No change there. Not even the slightest brush of wind through the grasses. 

The surf rolls past Dom’s feet, stopping a few feet up the sand. It catches his eyes and he looks down. The waves hadn’t come nearly so far before. He turns and stares out over the sea. 

The water is roiling, churning, and rising. Dom watches it move towards him, gaining strength slowly, rising up and building upon itself until it becomes one immense wave. 

Dom doesn’t consider running, knows it wouldn’t do him any good. He doesn’t think that he can die here. He didn’t drown earlier, and if he trusts Limbo once more, he should come out of this alive. He swallows and beats down his instinct to fight.

He turns to put his back to the wave and crouches, listening to the suck of the wave behind him. 

Then it hits him with a massive impact, and he has the briefest sensation of being dragged away before everything else disappears. 

 

 

 

 _The trees_ are all around him, immensely tall and thin. Dom can look between them and see sunlight in the distance. It gives him hope that he won’t be walking forever. 

How long has he been walking? He doesn’t know; that’s the way of Limbo. So he keeps going. 

Saito is at once a young boy and a middle-aged man in this dream, both creative and unbending, and he doesn’t know what to think about him, or what to do. He focuses on the image, the feeling and emotion that the man brings him to. If he concentrates hard enough, thinks about what he wants long enough, then he will find his way to Saito. Limbo, like all fairy tales, bends to a strong will. 

The trees do not quite part in front of him, but a thin trail winds through them, beginning at Dom’s feet. It is barely there; just as Dom begins to think that it has ended, disappeared around the corner and left him stranded, it appears again. Leading him onwards. He squints up through the trees again and frowns. 

The sunlight seems no closer; always so far away. He pauses and takes in a deep breath, peering up into the canopy. It feels like he has been walking for years. 

Dom shoves his hands into his pockets, frowns, and thrusts outwards with his mind. 

He doesn’t close his eyes this time, but watches as the forest around him twists, trees shattering silently and tearing themselves out of the ground. They vanish, leaving nothing but a bright, empty waste. 

And there is Saito, standing just a few feet away. Still a young boy. 

He whirls, his wild gaze falls on Dom, and Dom sees that he isn’t quite so young anymore. He straightens. Saito is taller and his clothes fit better. He blinks slowly at Dom, and his lips part, but he remains silent, swallowing whatever he’d been about to say. 

Saito looks away and turns, taking in the waste. Dom pulls his hands from his pockets, feeling a bit guilty. It had been a very grand gesture. Very dramatic and, if Dom is honest, he hadn’t expected to find Saito so easily. 

Saito must have seen the whole thing. 

He allows a small smile to touch his lips. “Hello, Saito.”

Saito twists to look at him. _You…_ he begins, then stops. He draws himself very straight and puts his hands behind his back. _How do you know my name, and how are you here?_

“I live here, Saito. Just like you do. We’re the only two people living here, so how could I not know your name?”

Saio frowns. _My family lives here, and all my friends; just because you haven’t met them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Besides, I only met you that once, when you washed up on the beach, and that was_ years _ago._

“Years?” It hasn’t been years – though Dom was walking for a very long time, and Limbo is a tricky place, he is sure of that. Saito’s mind is so caught up in Limbo that he has no realistic conception of time any more. His idea of years is really just moments or hours.

 _Yes, years. I haven’t seen you since, not once. So I don’t believe you live here, I think that you’re visiting from very far away._ He pauses and frowns, then leans to the side and glance behind Dom. _Did you bring me anything?_

Dom laughs, surprising himself. “No, I didn’t bring you anything. I’ll remember that for next time, though.” He thinks for a second. “I’ll show you something instead.”

He crouches down over the loose, dry dirt that comprises this waste and beckons Saito closer. “Come here, I have to show you.”

Saito takes a few steps, shoulders tense but gaze eager. 

“Closer,” Dom says, smiling to show that he won’t hurt. 

Slowly, Saito comes, and Dom wishes that the boy was younger again, more trusting and impulsive. Now he’s very tense, very much like his older self, and Dom finds it both frustrating and comforting. 

Dom points down at the ground. “I grew up in a small house. It had four steps up to the front porch, and one window on each side of the door.” As he talks, he begins to draw. “See?” A rough plan begins to take shape. “My house had four floors, and I always thought that the fourth floor, the attic, was infested with ghosts. There were no windows on that floor and it was very dark. My room was on the second floor, see, just here. I had the widest window in the whole house – I could even climb out onto the roof.”

He points. Saito is now so close that their shadows overlap on Dom’s diagram. Quickly, he reaches down and sketches a few more lines – square windows and shutters, the diagonal of a roof. As he outlines the chimney his fingers slows, and Dom exhales, putting power into the breath. 

In the next moment they are covered by shadow. Saito glances up, lips parted, and then freezes as he looks over Dom’s shoulder. 

Dom doesn’t need to look. He knows what he has just created, and so he wipes away the sketch on the ground before him. He feels heady – young again, and just discovering the dreaming. Saito’s shock is thrilling, exposed by his youth.

“I told you I live here,” he says and turns, taking in his childhood home, rising from the waste just a few yards away. 

Saito stands beside him, voiceless. Dom walks up the front steps and to the front door, which opens without a key or touch. He looks back. 

“Would you like to see my home?”

Saito swallows and closes his mouth. _How did you do that?_ he asks, waving his arms at the house. 

“Come in and I’ll tell you.” 

Dom walks away, down the hall into the kitchen. 

He opens the cupboards until he finds the one with the bowls, pulls open the drawers until he finds the spoons, and pulls down a box of cereal from a shelf he remembers well. He fills two bowls and slips the spoons in. It’s only as he pulls the milk from the fridge, sniffs it, and it splashes over the cereal that he hears Saito’s steps. 

“Don’t forget to close the front door,” he calls, as if that would make any difference at all here in Limbo. He wants to put the boy at ease, though, so he adopts the casual tone. Saito must feel at home here, comfortable with Dom. 

Saito walks into the kitchen, chin held high, and says, _You must teach me to do that._

“What, raise houses from the dust? Come eat your cereal.” Dom sits at the table and digs into his own bowl. Milk drips on the table and he casts around, searching for napkins that are nowhere in sight. He sighs, pulls his heavy jacket off and drapes it over the back of his chair, and uses his shirtsleeve. He waves at the other bowl, and Saito sits across from him, taking up the spoon. 

Saito takes a bite and chews for a long moment. Dom listens to him chew and waits for the next question. Saito has barely swallowed when it comes. 

_Who are you?_

He doesn’t answer right away. Dominic Cobb would be the easiest answer, but it will mean nothing to Saito. Giving the boy his name might confuse him more, if it does turn out the some vestige of his old memories remain in this state. 

“You don’t believe that I’m a merman, do you?” he asks, amused by the memory, and Saito glowers at him and sullenly crunches into his cereal.

He could make up a name. But no, he’s never been that creative. And he can’t pretend to be anyone else, because that would be as meaningless as making someone’s name up. 

“I’m a thief,” he settles for, and he knows it is the truth. He steals secrets, he steals memories, he steals lives. The only thing he’s ever been good at, and that’s theft. He bites back a sigh and takes another large bite of cereal. 

His gaze tracks across the wide window, and then back, fixing on the view beyond. The forest has returned and crowded right up against the house he built. He is surprised that the trees haven’t sprung up underneath his creation, ripped it apart. He glances down, eyeing the floorboards warily. 

Dom pushes away from the table and walks to the front door. He wrenches it open and looks out into the forest. A thin, barely there, winding trail cleaves the trees in two, leading away from the front steps of the house and curling out of sight. It looks as it Limbo isn’t going to fight him on this. He’s allowed to stay. 

When he walks back into the kitchen, Saito’s bowl is almost empty. Dom sits down and watches him, suddenly not very hungry. With visible effort, Saito swallows. 

_So,_ he says, eyes twinkling, _what do you steal?_

Dom makes a sudden decision to put all his painful memories out of his mind. He won’t let them ruin this moment. “Secrets. I know all your secrets, just by looking at you.”

The boy looks alarmed but sticks his chin up. _Well, what are they?_

“I can’t say, that would be telling,” Dom protests, faking offence. He does know Saito’s secrets, to be honest, but those secrets belong to another man. The boy sitting across from him, dripping milk all over the table from his spoon, is entirely a mystery to him. 

_But they’re_ my _secrets!_ he protests, and Dom smiles. 

“You never know who’s listening.”

Saito swivels, looking exaggeratedly around the room and under the table, before leaning back and raising his eyebrows. Dom chokes back a laugh and stands.

He grabs the bowls and walks to the sink. As he runs water in them, Saito sneaks up and leans on the counter. Dom looks at him, vaguely surprised by his height. He’s nearly to Dom’s shoulder, though still thin and gangly. He might be…twelve? Dom isn’t sure. His own children are too young to compare. For once, the pang in his heart at the thought of them is dulled. 

_I’m thirsty_ , Saito complains. 

Dom reaches up, pulls a glass from the cabinet next to the sink, and starts the water running cold. As he pauses, Saito snatches the glass away from him and leans into him. Dom steps to the side. 

_I can do this myself, you know._

Caught between bewilderment and amazement, Dom walks away, glancing back as Saito tests the water over and over, waiting for it to cool. He stops at the fireplace and leans on the mantle, running his fingers through his hair. 

His gaze drifts over to the frames perched on the mantle and freezes there. Badly startled, he scours the framed photographs.

Five frames on the mantle, and every one holds a picture of Mal. In one she smiles directly at the camera, corners of her eyes creased; she looks down and away; she has one arm wrapped around Dom, who is just cut from the edge of the picture. She looks so happy and so beautiful.

With a shaking hand he touches the closest frame, looking into Mal’s eyes as he tilts the picture forward, sliding it face down. 

_Here,_ comes from behind him, and Dom turns. He feels guilty for flipping Mal’s photo face down, but he can’t bear to look at her. He forces a wan smile onto his face. 

Silently, Saito hands him the glass of water, then places his own to his lips, slowly sipping. Dom fingers the cold glass, moisture already beading on the outside. He turns back to the mantle, reaches out, and lifts the frame upright. Mal smiles at him. 

_She’s very nice, you know,_ Saito says from behind him. 

Dom looks down, remembering that day on the beach, at once today and many days ago, and how he had seen Saito walk away, hand in hand with a woman so much like Mal, and marvels how at how little can surprise him any more. She has been here all along.

Though he let her go, some shadow still remains in dreams. He thinks that, just maybe, no matter how many years pass, she will always be near. It is not an unpleasant thought.

“How long have you…?” he finds himself asking. 

_What, known Mal?_

Hearing her name is still a blow to Dom, even months after her death; he swallows his pain with a gulp of water to listen to the boy. 

_Oh, my whole life,_ Saito say casually. _She doesn’t talk much, but she is always so nice. She shows me all the best places to go._

“Did she show you the beach?”

Saito looks down into his water, lashes hiding his eyes. _Yeah, but that was supposed to be a secret. I don’t know how you found our beach._

“It was…a mistake,” Dom says, then glances down. Saito is nodding. 

_Well, I’m glad you didn’t die._

“What?”

_In the sea. I’m glad you didn’t drown._

A soft smile touches Dom’s, and he feels very fond. “Yeah, me too.”

 

 

 _Once_ Saito seems satisfied, poking through the kitchen cabinets and exclaiming over the expiration dates on the canned food, Dom leaves him and walks through his home. 

It has and has not changed. The furniture and light are exactly as Dom remembers them, but there is something missing. He thinks that it is the feel of a family – despite Saito’s voice drifting up from the kitchen, the house feels unused and empty, filled with the kind of static that crawls up the back of his neck and leaves him feeling uneasy. 

He rounds each corner slowly, half expecting to see Mal there. She never appears. 

He pushes open the door to his own bedroom, and finds the bed grown too small and the window tiny. Everything had seemed so much bigger. Once. 

Dom sighs and runs a hand through his hair, grimacing as he encounters tough knots and as he thinks about his own maudlin musings. Of course the house has changed – it would be foolish for him to expect otherwise. 

He looks out the window and through the trees, and sees only nothing. He frowns and pulls the sash up. The air outside is exactly the same as the air inside, without even a breath of wind or crispness. Dom leans out, purses his lips, and softly blows against the dream, watching it ripple and bend at his will. 

 

 

_“I want to show you something.”_

Saito’s light steps follow him up the stairs. When Dom reaches the top, he turns and pushes open the first door. Saito pauses before following him inside. 

“Come in,” Dom says, walking to the window and leaning on the sill. Saito leans beside him, and gasps. 

_How?_ he asks before turning and running out of the room. Dom hears him clatter down the stairs, sprinting to check the view from the downstairs windows. 

Down there, the forest grows outside, dark and fathomless. Dom remembers the shadows that it cast across the wood floors well. Up here, however, is the sea. Outside the window is the same beach where he met Saito. Dom breathed life into the dream and pulled the beach out of his memories. All they will have to do is climb out the window and across the roof to feel the sand between their toes once more. 

Saito slams back into the room. By the time Dom looks away from the rolling surf, he seems calm again, though his shoulders are stiff with tension.

_How is it there? It isn’t downstairs, it’s just here._

“I put it here.”

Saito glance is incredulous and challenging. 

“I stole it.”

 _You can’t_ steal _a beach. You can’t steal the sea. It’s impossible._

“It is impossible. Saito, sit down, I am going to say something and you have to listen very closely.”

Dom settles onto the wall below the window and pats the floorboards. Saito stares and then sits in a single fluid motion, gaze intense and demanding answers.

“The beach is here, really here. It isn’t a painting or an illusion – all you have to do is climb out the window and you’ll be there.”

Dom pauses, considering his next words. 

“You’ve seen me do many impossible things, even if don’t remember them all. I’ve survived drowning. I’ve banished an entire forest, raised this house from the dust, and re-grown the forest minutes later. I’ve trapped and tricked you, so that the only way you knew that none of this was real was a goddamned carpet.” He smiles involuntarily. “But I didn’t save you from dying. _Think_ , Saito. Think.” He reaches out for Saito and then stops, hand millimeters from the boy’s face, fingers splayed. “The impossible is _possible_ here. This is not the real world. You must think, you must see that.”

He bites back the words that want to spill from him, unwilling to push too much information on Saito and afraid of his own desperation. More than anything, he doesn’t want to shock and confuse Saito so badly that he retreats and hides away in Limbo again. 

When Saito finally speaks there is a terrible hesitation in his voice, as if he can barely force the words out. _If this isn’t real…what is it?_

His gaze comes up and meets Dom’s, and Dom hopes. That is the question – the exact question – he’d hoped Saito would ask. He is as sharp and intelligent as a boy as he had been as an adult. Dom shouldn’t be surprised. 

“This is a dream.”

_A dream? The beach is a dream? But it felt real._

“Yes, the beach is a dream. But not only that – everything here is a dream.” Dom reached out and grasped Saito’s forearm, pulling his attention back to him. “Even you.”

Saito pulls back and Dom’s grip tightens. 

_I…I am not a dream. I am alive! I can feel you, and I’m not hungry anymore – this can’t be a dream!_ His eyes are wild and crazed, and he bites his lip. 

“Yes, you’re alive. You aren’t dead or unreal or anything else, and dreams always feel real,” Dom says quickly, leaning forward. Saito keeps pulling back, but Dom knows that he can’t stop now. He has to force Saito to remember. “But you will never remember how they began. Saito, you have to think back – you have to remember being awake. How did you get here?”

 _I _am_ awake._

“No, no you’re not. You’re dreaming. Think. Do you remember being shot? The pain, right here?” Dom reaches out and lays a hand across the boy’s shoulder and chest. He presses down, insistent.

Saito glances down and his mouth twists. _I…think so._

A smile crosses Dom’s face and he feels his eyes light up. His hand fists in Saito’s shirt and drags him forward. “You remember the pain? Good. Think about that pain. Think about how it was immense, too much, how it crawled up your neck and into your thoughts and how it made every beat of your heat feel a second too slow and how you fought it, pushed it back, and followed me deeper into dreams. _Think about it_ ,” he pleads.

Saito is inches away, lips parted and eyes wide, stunned. Dom searches his stare for any sign of understanding, for any sign that he remembers the past. He has to. He has to remember on his own or Limbo will never let him go. 

_Let me go_ , he finally whispers, and Dom is so startled that he stares in response. He’d been so sure that he was getting through to Saito, but now the boy is pulling away from him, and…

 _Let me go! I don’t remember any of that!_ Saito shouts, twisting and pulling away, crawling backwards through the room and stumbling to his feet. _You’re crazy! This is real! I’m awake and alive and you’re a liar._ He sprints from the room, leaving Dom crouched on the floor, listening to Saito disappear down the stairs, running away. 

Too much. The thought runs through his mind on loop for a few moments. It had been too much.

Dom buries his face in his hands, dragging his fingers through his hair and trying to think. He wants to wake up and go back to his life, to his children. He can’t do any of that without Saito. 

Lunging to his feet, Dom walks to his old bed and sits on the edge. He takes a deep breath, flexing his legs and neck. He’s sore and tense. He needs to take a step back and think. If Saito cannot remember, how can he wake him?

His gaze trails across the room and snags on a photograph pinned to the wall. Like all the other pictures in the house, it’s of Mal, and her glance is direct and accusing, even though she’s simply a photograph. 

A cold shock runs through Dom and he reaches out, rips the paper from the wall, and attempts to throw it across the room. It flutters to the floor and Dom curses. He cannot bear to think of violating Saito that way. Not now, now that he knows him so well.

Dom lies back on the bed, feet dangling off the edge and eyes closed, trying to think about the problem and not think about it until he feel a headache building and stops. It’s only then that he realizes that he hadn’t heard the sound of a door slam. 

Saito is still inside the house. 

 

 

 _Maybe_ it should have been obvious to Dom, but it hadn’t been. He had found Saito wandering in a dark forest, and before that he’d been alone on a beach. And when Dom asked him to follow him and come inside, Saito had done so without hesitation. 

Saito has nowhere to go. Whatever home Limbo has crafted for him isn’t enough. He may feel alive, but he isn’t truly living. This is, right now, the only home that Saito has, even if he is afraid of the man who created it. 

Dom steps slowly down the stairs, careful not to make any noise. 

He rounds the end of the banister and glances around. He doesn’t want to scare the boy again. At the living room doorway he stops. Saito is perched on the couch, curled up and still. For a wild instant Dom thinks the boy is crying, but he quickly realizes that he is wrong. 

Saito sits on the couch, looking out the windows and into the forest. Golden light trickles through the trees and through the windows, reaching across the floor towards him. The sun is setting and the light is waning. The day in Limbo is ending. Dom wonders how much time has passed above. A few seconds? That much, even? 

The thought makes him ache inside. Will he spend another lifetime here?

He can’t bear to let Saito end up like that – tied to life here instead of breathing and laughing and smiling above. Dom grits his teeth, considering all the things that he did wrong and all the damage he has done by trying to force Saito’s memories.

He steps away from the wall and into the doorway, and says haltingly, “I’m sorry. I was wrong.”

 

 

 _The sky turns blood red_ as Limbo’s sun sets. Dom watches the shadows grow longer and hears the soft gasp and sigh of a yawn. 

“Tired?” he asks. 

Saito nods slowly. _Are you?_ he asks, and Dom doesn’t answer because he has never felt tired in Limbo. 

“Let’s go upstairs,” he suggests. 

Saito pushes back from the kitchen table and trudges towards the stairs. Dom follows. 

The walk along the hall, passing the bedroom by the sea – though Dom glances through the door as he walks by and glimpses a wave surging up the beach – and going to the very end. Saito walks straight through the door but Dom stops, looking into his parents’ old bedroom. 

It is a large room, and the high ceilings and wide windows make it feel larger, immense. It feel like Dom could walk straight off the carpeted floor and into the forest – as if the room is an extension of the nature outside. He’d never appreciated how lovely his parents’ room was when he’d been little. 

Saito covers the room in a few long strides and springs onto the bed, flopping down, arms spread. He wriggles down into the comforter. Dom half smiles and pushes through the old memories, walking into the room and leaning over the bed. 

“Tired?” he asks again. 

Saito’s head rolls and he looks at Dom. _You were lying, right? This is real. It has to be real._

His tone is pleading, but it sounds like he has already convinced himself of the fact and just wants to hear Dom say it. Dom realizes that he wants this to be the reality. 

He wants this peaceful life to be it, everything. He (almost) doesn’t want to wake. Dom slides onto the bed next to Saito, his weight dipping the mattress down. He reaches out but hesitates, then lays his hands in his lap. 

“I was lying.”

The last rays of light glimmer on the wall above the bed. Dom watches them until they narrow to threads and vanish. Only then does he look down at Saito. 

The boy’s eyes are closed and his breathing is slow. His lips still stretch in a slight smile. Dom slides carefully backwards, off the bed, and creeps out of the room. He walks to his old room and lies down on the bed. 

It creaks under him, and he wonders if he’s too heavy or if the bed is too old. Probably the former. He rolls over to pull his jacket off, which was not made for sleeping in, and it falls to the floor with a thump. His feet hang off the end of the bed. He turns onto his side and pulls his legs up. 

Limbo is a very quiet place when no one is speaking. There are no bird calls, no rustling of leaves, and even the sound of the waves is absent. It is as if the entire world is a painting – beautiful, entrancing, and false. He stares out the window to where Limbo’s sun still shines. From this angle, he cannot see the waves, but he can see the curve of the beach fading into the distance. 

The silence lulls him. His eyes slip closed – suddenly it feels as if he hasn’t rested in ages – and his thoughts drift apart and fade. 

 

 

 _When he wakes_ , the world has changed. The house is gone. The forest is gone – so is the sea, the path, and Saito. Dom blinks up at the bright sky for a long moment before rolling over and springing to his feet. He pulls his leather jacket up off the bare ground beside him. 

The wasteland again. It reminds him of a desert, all sun and bleak expanses of earth, but there is no sand here; no dunes and no wind. Nothing but blank earth that crunches under his shoes. Dom shifts.

It isn’t precisely hot, but he leaves his jacket dangling from his hand. He frowns at the nothingness around him and takes a step forward. 

Limbo spins and tilts dizzily, but by the time his foot lands it has settled, changed. 

Sleek cars rush by Dom, weaving in and out of one another, and shining buildings scrape the sky. It is raining. A chill sweeps through him that has nothing to do with the brisk wind howling down the streets. 

He lifts his jacket and spreads it over his head. His fingers clench white around the leather. 

Projections hurry by and Dom wonders whether they’re his. They certainly ignore him as they’re supposed to. Dom looks back out to the cars and ignores the projections slipping by him. Where to now? What’s next?

The labyrinth that Saito has constructed is winding tighter around his mind, trapping Dom and confusing him so that now he cannot even think of a way out. 

His jacket is fairly waterproof, so Dom’s head is dry, but all that rainwater has to go somewhere, and it trickles down his jacket and tumbles down to land on the back of his shirt and pants; overall, he’s beginning to feel uncomfortably soaked through. 

He cuts his losses and slips his jacket on, and feels his hair begin to soak through almost immediately. He watches through the rain as a sleek black car pulls up to the curb in front of him and stops. Dom turns and begins to walk away. 

The car door behind him clicks as it opens. “Get in!” a softly accented voice calls. 

Dom keeps walking. His fists clench. He watches the projections’ shoes hurry by, splashing. 

Something presses against the side of his head, and he stops. Dom slides his gaze to the side and catches sight of a tall figure. After a second the projection steps into view, the gun in his hand pointed directly at Dom’s forehead. 

He’s squarely built and made for violence, and Dom doesn’t feel much like fighting, so when the projection says, “Get in the car,” Dom turns and walks back to the curb and steps down, slipping in through the open door and pulling it shut behind him.

It’s very quiet inside, as if the entire world outside vanished with the click of a door lock. He listens for a moment and hears the soft sound of breathing to his left. He sinks back into the cushioned seats as the car smoothly accelerates. 

Dom closes his eyes and reaches for the fabric of Limbo, but it twists away from him for the first time, leaving him without any control over the dream and something like panic coloring his thoughts. 

“Why did you leave?” The question comes from the left, and it is spoken softly, almost too low to hear, by a soft voice blurred by accent.

He straightens in the seat, braces himself as the car leans into a turn, and looks. In the dim light, Dom only sees a slim figure at first – male, dark hair. He blinks and waits a moment as his eyes adjust, then feels his breath catching. 

The man is young, at just that stage which makes age impossible to tell, and he is Asian – gaze shadowed under his long lids and the ends of his blue-black hair brushing at his eyes. He’s watching Dom as Dom watches him, and Dom can’t force his gaze away. He’s so familiar. 

“Where have you been, Mr. Thief?” the young man asks, and with a jolt Dom realizes that he’s speaking English. He scrambles to reconnect to this young man; he pieces the question back together and tries to answer. 

“I was sleeping.”

Thin lips curve into a something like a smile. “You sleep for a long time.”

“Never on purpose,” Dom whispers. 

“A very long time,” Saito murmurs, smile slipping away, and he turns to look out the window. 

Dom looks out his own window, to the gray city sweeping by, but finds his gaze drawn back. “Do you believe me yet?” he asks.

Saito says nothing for a long moment, and Dom considers asking again. Then, “Believe what? Your lies? No, I do not believe that you were sleeping. I think that you left me alone and did not come back. I know it.”

“I did not lie to you,” Dom snaps. That wasn’t what he’d been asking about, anyway. Damn Saito for being so difficult. 

He opens his mouth, intending to ask again, more clearly, whether Saito has seen the lie that is his life down here in Limbo, but Saito cuts through his thoughts and his mouth clicks shut. 

“No. You only tell me stories. You tell me my entire life is a lie and that I am a dream. You tell me that you did not leave but were only _sleeping_ , when I know otherwise.” He stops and looks back at Dom. 

Dom squeezes the buckle of the seatbelt until his hand throbs. “I never meant to leave. _Never_.” He wants this to be over so that he can go home, back to his family and a world where Saito will understand. He’d never wanted to leave any of it. 

Saito looks him over, gaze fathomless in the dark. Dom waits for him to speak but he never does, and the moment dies, and Saito blinks and turns away. Dom closes his eyes and presses his fingers into his temples, trying to stem his burgeoning headache. 

The car drives on. 

 

 

 _He wonders_ how Saito controls the dreams. As Dom steps out of the car he reaches for Limbo again, grasping not only with his mind but with the hand that grips the metal of the door, and he feels nothing. Only chill, slick metal under his hand, damp from the rain. 

Saito walks around the back of the car and towards him. Dom reaches into the pocket of his jacket and feels the metal top against his fingers. He hasn’t felt the need to check it before, but now…what makes this moment so real?

Saito’s skin is pale and smooth, his face utterly blank. He seems almost unreal, smoothed as if he has lost all traces of humanity and feeling. Where is the curious little boy, the darting of his eyes to see everything around him, his seemingly instinctual trust of Dom? Saito’s gaze meets his and his irises are dark; his glance floats away. He nods to the projection behind Dom, the tall dark figure who acts as his driver, and walks down the gravel drive. His shoes crunch in the dirt and he doesn’t look back, knowing that Dom will follow. 

The rain has lightened to a mist, which turns the world gray and swallows up the car behind them, and Dom quickens his pace to keep Saito in sight. He tightened his grip on his totem until the point digs into his skin. 

As the mist begins to thin it seems as if a landscape is being painted around them in broad strokes. Gently rolling hills, low clouds, and barren trees. The city, once again, is gone. Dom whirls. 

“Where is the city?” he calls.

Saito barely glances back. “We have been driving for hours.”

 _No, we haven’t,_ Dom thinks. Time has bent around Saito, but left Dom alone. They had only been driving for ten minutes, maybe fifteen. He still has some control over Limbo, then, even if it is unconscious. He takes a deep breath, fortifying himself, and strides forward to catch up with Saito. 

He reaches out, takes Saito’s shoulder, and spins him around. “Look at me,” he demands, and Saito does, though his look is unreadable. It’s infuriating and Dom will do anything, risk anything, to break his mask.

“Where are we? Can you tell me that? Look around you, can’t you see how strange all this is?” Dom asks all in a rush, and flings his arm out, gesturing to the blank landscape. 

Slowly, one of Saito’s eyebrows rises and a thrill runs through Dom. “Of course I know where we are,” he says. “We are at my home.”

He pulls slightly at Dom’s grip, looking behind him, and Dom’s gaze drifts over Saito’s shoulder, landing on a great house that hadn’t been there an instant before. He hadn’t even _felt_ the shift.

“You brought me to your home, do you remember? This is mine,” Saito says. The tension in his shoulders loosens. “When I saw you on the street…” His voice drifts off to silence and he stares for a long moment at the house. 

It is very Japanese, all sweeping eaves and round-tiled roofs. It is the only spot of color in the entire landscape, the only real thing in this ink stained land, and Dom can’t help but follow Saito’s gaze and look. The windows are dark and empty. He wonders if Saito lives here alone. 

“I could not have left you,” Saito finishes, and Dom looks over to him in surprise. His lips are pressed slightly together, the corners of his eyes creased. Is he irritated, uncomfortable? Dom can’t tell, and it’s driving him crazy. 

Saito looks back at him, face blank once more. “Come in, and we will figure out where you will be staying.” He pulls away and walks down the drive that leads to the house. 

“Wait,” Dom says, thoughts racing. “What’s happened? I mean, since I saw you? How did you learn English – who taught you? Have you been living here?”

Saito takes the front steps of the house fluidly and reaches for the front door, pushing it open. “Do not worry about that,” he says. “We will have a chance to speak in detail later. Come inside.” With that, he steps into the house and vanishes into darkness. Dom follows, but stops at the edge of the doorway. 

He can see almost nothing inside. Only the barest gleam of wood is visible; the entire house makes him uneasy. He glances up at the gray sky, still shrouded in mist, and closes his eyes. He reaches out again for the fabric of Limbo, and this time grasps it. Before it can slip away he gives it a sharp tug, a twist of his thoughts that knots it into shape, and he opens his eyes to see the mist and clouds tear themselves to pieces.

The landscape revealed is much the same in shape. All the hills are still there, and the trees as well, but they seem completely different to Dom. The rolling hills are revealed to be green and silver, covered in thick, soft grasses. The rocks of the gravel drive are all shades of rich gray and brown, and the barren trees have dark bark and green moss covering over them. The sky is a deep blue, and the wood and clay of the house fairly shines. 

Dom turns and looks inside. Light filters through shoji-screened windows and pours over the entrance hall and wide staircase. Halfway up it, Saito freezes, hand gripping the banister tightly. Dom steps over the threshold and closely the front door gently behind him. 

He feels much better. Limbo slips away from his grasp, but he can feel it distantly, and knows that he’ll be able to tug at it again if needed. He straightens his jacket over his shoulders. On the stairs, Saito’s head leans back and he looks up, gazing at the motes of dust floating through the golden light. His lips are every so slightly parted.

It really is a beautiful house, Dom realizes. Once the grayness has gone. 

Dom walks toward the staircase and stops, because Saito has turned and stepped down, and his eyes are wide and full of light, and the tiniest smile tugs at his lips. It seems, on him, like a broad grin. Dom’s breath stops and his lips part, but he keeps walking, right up the stairs until he’s next to the young man. 

“Thank you,” Saito says, voice much deeper and older than Dom expects, even now. He reaches out and pauses as if unsure what comes next, and tension laces the air. Dom watches, unbalanced as well. 

Saito’s smile grows slightly and his hand lands on Dom’s wrist, drifts down to his hand. He laces his fingers into Dom’s and he gives Dom’s hand a squeeze. He moves up the steps, pulling Dom along, and Dom tightens his grip. 

 

 

 _From the angle of the sun_ , Dom can see that his room is placed at the back of the house. He walks across it and pushes open a screened window to let the light stream in, and he turns to see what the room is like. 

The wood might be cherry, or a light mahogany. It is deep red, laced with gold and black, and it fairly glows. It covers the floors and walls, which are bare and free of any art or ornamentation. The bed is low and wide, covered with cream-colored sheets. Across the room, an entire wall is covered with sleek cabinets, the same wood as the floor. It is handsome and impersonal. 

Saito, leaning against the doorframe, is the only thing that draws his eyes. He pulls his gaze away and looks around the room once more, past the open window, and then back to it. 

He moves forward and leans out over the sill, letting a gust of wind catching his hair. The beach. 

The back of the house overlooks a cliff which tumbles down into sand and the crashing of waves. The sand is golden and rich, and the sea deep green. This is the beach, the same beach where Dom first met Saito, this Saito. He pulled this place half across Limbo, to his childhood home, and placed it outside his bedroom window to shock a young boy. 

Now, Saito is shocking him. Dom sucks in a deep breath, inhaling a heady rush of salt air. It’s cool and refreshing, and completely magical. He turns to look at Saito. 

“It is really there, you know. I often walk along the shore, and I do not have to climb out of a window to do it,” Saito says. Dom can almost see the amusement in his look. Then he walks away. 

“Come down after you have cleaned up, and we will eat.” Saito’s voice comes floating around back to him. 

Dom leans against the window frame and his head falls back with a clunk against the wood. Cool sea air rushes in and down the neck of his jacket. He looks back out at the rolling water. 

 

 

 _It is the same house._ He’s been here before; in Saito’s dreams, before all this madness began. This is the room where Mal shot Arthur. Dom frowns and his fingers brush across the polished wood of the table. He hears the click of Saito’s steps behind him. 

“Sit down, Mr. Thief,” Saito says, leaning forward and setting two wine glasses full of a dark red onto the table. He pulls out a chair and sits, unbuttoning his suit jacket and letting it fall open.

Dom pulls out a chair and sits beside him. Saito pushes one of the wine glasses towards him and Dom grasps the stem. He stares into the wine and asks,

“How long has it been since you last saw me? What have you been doing?” 

Saito takes a sip from his glass and, after a moment, asks a question of his own.

“Please tell me – I feel as though I am at a disadvantage whenever I speak with you – what is your name, Mr. Thief?”

Dom freezes, glass lifted and sharp, fruity scent filling his nose, and looks at Saito. He stares back, gaze intense and lips parted, and Dom's eyes skitter away. His name.

“My name is Dominic Cobb,” he finally says, “but you should call me Dom.”

“Dominic Cobb, Dom,” Saito repeats, rolling the names around in his softly accented voice, and Dom takes a gulp of the wine. He places the glass down with a clunk and pushes it away.

“So, Dominic Cobb, why are you here?”

“What?” Dom is startled by the question, and it comes out hard. Saito raises an eyebrow at him.

“Why do you keep finding me, or how is it that I keep finding you? What is it that keeps drawing us together?”

“I don’t know,” Dom says, though of course he is lying. “How did you find me today?”

“I was not trying to find you. I simply looked out the window of my car, and there you were.”

“No, it doesn’t work that way. You had to have thought of me.”

“I did not.”

“But it doesn’t work that way!” Dom exclaims, exasperated. He has to make this make sense. “Look,” he says, leaning over the table. Saito stares at him. Dom grimaces.

He reaches out, grasps his wine glass, and with a flick of his wrist shatters it, wine splashing over the table. The liquid pools, just a few drops gathering, bloody, around the shattered stem and glimmering shards. “This is Limbo,” he states, gesturing towards the puddle.

“Limbo?” Saito asks, but Dom doesn’t stop.

“Yes, Limbo, the dream and your mind together. You see, your mind is the glass, but since it’s been shattered, all of your thoughts and dreams, _this_ dream, came pouring out. But I’m not a part of your mind. Do you think that I’m part of your mind, just one of your thoughts?” He directs the last question to Saito who, brow furrowed, answers.

“No, you are yourself. Are you unsure of that?”

Dom frowns. “No, no, we’re not talking about me. Look at the wine.”

“I am looking at it,” Saito snaps, and his gaze is full of fire. “But it does not make this story you are telling any clearer.”

“Just…” Dom begins.

“No. Stop,” Saito snaps, pushing his chair back from the table with a screech. “I think I know what you are trying to say. Like the time before, you are trying to tell me that my life, my world, is all a dream and made up.”

“Not made up, no, this is all real in some way, likely from your memories—“

“This is _my_ life!” Saito cuts through Dom’s words.

He purses his lips. _Damned stubborn man._ Saito steps away from him and the table. His shoulders seem hunched for an instant, his bearing old and worn. The man Dom knew is in there, somewhere. Dom reaches out over the table without looking. 

“I’m sorry.” It seems like he’s always apologizing to Saito. It’s his fault that the man is stuck here, anyway. “Here,” he offers, holding out his glass with the wine in it, whole and perfect. 

Saito blindly reaches out and grasps the cool stem, then looks down and straightens. He whirls, eyes wide, and stares at the table. It is unmarked. Not a shard of glass sits on it, or a drop of dark liquid. His gaze snaps to Dom. 

Dom smiles, cold and determined. “You’ll see the truth.”

Silently, Saito snarls and hurls the glass across the table, the tinkle of the breaking glass disappointingly soft. He turns to Dom and opens his mouth, a drop of wine clinging to his cheekbone, then shuts it with a snap and storms away, footfalls echoing through the house.

 

 

 _The house does not change_. Dom wakes in the same bed he fell asleep in, lying in the same position, with only the light in the sky having changed. His mind struggles to start, hazy and gray. He pushes himself upright and rolls to his feet, determined to get moving if nothing else. He slowly walks to the bathroom and turns the water on with a sudden crash of sound. He splashes it across his face. 

It drips down the collar of his shirt and over his collarbones, and he flexes his shoulders. Sleep is relaxing its grip. How can he sleep in Limbo? How is it possible? He pats his face dry and peers in the mirror. No change, except perhaps that his eyes seem more tired. He won’t age or change here in Limbo unless he wishes it. And never again will he grow old here. 

Dom walks back into the bedroom and throws open that wooden closet doors. Inside there are several dark suits, pressed white shirts and white socks, casual pants and cotton shirts. He strips off his wrinkled clothes – caked with salt and sweat – and pulls on some of the fresh, clean garments. They fit perfectly. He leaves his old clothes on the floor, out of spite or childishness, or maybe laziness. 

He walks to the window and throws open the screens, letting fresh air and light pour in. At the edge of the horizon, he sees Limbo’s golden light rising in a parody of the sunrise. Time to find Saito. 

A sick feeling claws at his stomach, but Dom pushes it away, unwilling to think about what would happen if he found Saito gone, vanished again from his grasp. 

He walks down the long, dark hall, glancing briefly into rooms as he goes by. There are a few more bedrooms, a room that looks like a study, one with a single chair silhouetted in the center, and a few that are completely empty, their screened windows shut tight and shadows long. 

At the very end of the hall, in the room farthest from the rising sun, he finds Saito. He is curled up in his own low bed, in a room nearly identical to Dom’s except for the broad canvas that hangs over his bed, showing a sun-dappled forest, mysterious and dark. 

The room is dark as well, but much less beautiful. It seems close and brooding, and shadows crowd around the bed and tangled sheets. Dom walks over to the side of the bed and watches Saito for a moment. He breathes shallowly, curled tight among the bedclothes that have wrapped all around him. For a wild second, Dom wonders whether he has been having nightmares. 

He stands, unsure, for long moments. The room slowly lightens and when Dom pulls himself from his own thoughts, he realizes Saito is awake and watching him from the bed. His gaze glints in the dim light. Dom swallows. 

“Good morning,” he tries, at a loss. 

Saito shifts, wriggling to free his arms from the sheets and then pushing back until he can lean against the wall. He shoves a hand through his hair and says in a rough voice, “Good morning.”

He should leave. Dom knows it, and he wants to turn and walks away badly, but he hasn’t yet. His feet feel heavy, glued to the floor. The worn t-shirt Saito has worn to bed is stretched and thin, carelessly clinging to him. 

Saito lays a hand on the mattress beside him and says, “Please sit.” 

Dom sits. Saito’s head rests against the wooden wall, and his eyes are heavy-lidded with sleep. His gaze reminds Dom of a reptile, so blank and calculating. 

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Dom finds himself saying. “I just woke and I’m hungry, so I was looking around…” He nearly bites his tongue in order to silence himself. He feels like a fool. 

“It is all right, I am awake now,” Saito replies. His voice is still rough and he reaches out, lays a heavy hand on Dom’s arm, and sighs. Dom follows his gaze to the dimly lit window across the room, still closed and screened. 

When he looks back, Saito’s gaze is on him. His hand on Dom’s arm holds him still as he asks in a voice hardly a whisper, “You are not going to leave me again, will you, Mr. Thief?”

Dom moves forward again, hand against Saito’s throat, shoving him back against the wall with a bang. Saito doesn’t gasp but his lips part and his eyes narrow, and his hand on Dom’s arm tightens into a claw. 

“My name is Dom,” he says. “Don’t call me that.” He releases Saito’s neck slowly. 

Saito moves forward, uncoiling. “I do not want you to leave again.” 

Dom tenses, drawing back into himself. Saito lays a hand on his thigh, just above where his knee presses into the mattress. His gaze flicks down and then up. 

“Please,” he says.

And Dom reaches out and grasps Saito’s shoulder, holding him tight. “I won’t leave. We will leave this place together. I’ll never leave you here again.”

Saito’s lips curve into a smile that seems sharp somehow and he says, “Thank you.” 

His voice is clearer; he is beginning to wake up. He draws away from Dom, body tightening and growing tense. He shifts, and Dom releases his hold on him. Then he is gone, leaving Dom cold, and he listens to Saito’s steps as he pads across the room and, presumably, into the bathroom. 

Dom doesn’t move. Numbly, his hand reaches into his pocket and he brushes his fingers across the cold metal of his token. It doesn’t warm, not even when he clutches it tight. 

He pulls it out and casts it across the small bedside table with a clink. The gray metal blurs, spinning in circles and loops across the small table. It darts near the edge and then back, spinning, spinning, spinning. Dom leans forward, head in his hands, watching. 

His fingers dig into his cheeks – always clean, just the barest hint of roughness. He wonders what it would be like to grow a bread, let Limbo change him, then reconsiders. It would look foolish, probably. 

Then a hand darts from nowhere and snatches his totem off the table, cradling it gently, and Dom’s heart stutters and freezes. It’s as if a piece of his soul has been grasped and lifted away from him. 

He lunges to his feet and Saito steps back, lips parted. His hand is around Saito’s before he has time to think and he pulls them close together, fingers working against Saito’s, pulling his grasp open so that he can reclaim his totem and place it somewhere safe, hidden away. The tension in the air is tight and fierce. 

“Never touch this,” Dom warns, and Saito’s fist tightens around the top. 

“What is it, that you guard it so fiercely?” Saito dares, and Dom hisses.

He looks down at their hands and begins prying Saito’s fingers open by brute force. Saito shoves a hand between them and pushes Dom back. Dom clings to him, refusing to let go. He needs the totem back and he needs it now. 

“Why are you doing this?” asks Saito. 

Dom grits his teeth and focuses. “This is my totem, and I need it. The longer you hold onto it, the closer you bring the both of us to ruin.”

Saito frowns, plainly confused, but his fist loosens and the top slips free. Dom snatches at it and pulls it close, fingers touching the chill metal. It is unchanged, but almost…warmer to the touch. 

“How are we coming close to ruin, Dom?”

Dom’s gaze snaps up, startled by his name. 

“How.” 

Saito is demanding answers, but Dom doesn’t know how to give them. Not if Saito refuses to believe that this is a dream. He tries anyway. 

“This totem is…a landmark. It shows me what is real and what isn’t.” Dom pauses and looks up, but Saito has offered no protests. “It shows me the difference between reality and dreams.”

Saito’s mouth twists and he looks away, shoulders tense. 

“Saito, please just…”

“No! Not again,” Saito snaps. He walks away.

Dom reaches out and grabs him, using Saito’s momentum to push his further, up against the doorjamb. Saito twists, hands coming up to fight, but Dom pushes harder and he hisses with pain and subsides, breathing hard.

“ _Listen to me_ ,” Dom growls. 

“No,” Saito grows back, voice low. 

“For god’s sake, I’m not trying to take your life away from you, I’m trying to give it back!” Dom exclaims. He shoves Saito against the wall angrily, shaking him. He watches Saito’s flinch. By now he half thinks Saito won’t believe anything Dom tells him. 

“Now, you listen to me,” he hears, and opens eyes that he doesn’t remember closing. He looks at Saito. 

“ _This_ is my life,” Saito says, snarling. “I do not know how many times I will have to tell you, but I am growing tired of it. I was born here, and I have grown here, and I will die here. I cannot leave it.”

Dom pulls away. Saito will die here, in order to wake. Dom will have to kill him and then himself. He feels a weight that he hasn’t felt for days settle back on him. 

The smooth barrel of his gun rests again at the small of his back again, tucked into his pants. He considers throwing it away, but knows it will just return as soon as he thinks of death again, and it’s probably better that he keeps it close. 

He rubs at his eyes and straightens. Death. He looks over to the doorjamb, but Saito is gone. Dom glances down the hall and listens for a long moment, heart pounding, and hears Saito’s quiet steps on the stairs. 

He lets Saito go and glances back at the rumpled bed before walking away, back to his own room. He shuts the door behind him. 

 

 

 

 _Limbo as a dream state_ is not something that can be mapped, modeled, or captured. It is fluid and ephemeral, always shifting and prone to rapid and violent change unless harnessed by the power of the human mind. Dom knows this well.

But in the past, in his explorations of Limbo, he has always had an instinctual grasp of the terrain. He has known exactly where he is standing and in which direction he should step to get to where he wants to go. Not now. 

He feels adrift in this dream. Limbo is uncommonly stable at the moment; Saito, whether by sheer mental determination or the volatile state of his own mind, has attuned Limbo to himself and forced it into his own boundaries. Dom should be able to reach out and touch the limit of dream, feel its curves, and map it in his mind. 

The shape of the dream escapes him, slipping away every time he tries to grasp it. Nothing in Limbo is familiar or expected at the moment. Every choice he makes is tenuous – just guesswork, in the end. 

He is lost, and growing quickly mired in Saito’s dream. He knows that if he wants free, he will have to kill Saito, and soon.

Dom mind shies away from the thought of killing Saito, though the gun digging painfully into the small of his back makes the option seem ever more real. He can’t help but deep Saito’s eyes as a young boy, how sparkling and full of life they had been. Even now, older and more restrained, Dom thinks that he catches that spark in Saito’s eyes. He could never snuff that out – stand there and watch it fade, dragging this amazing dreamscape into nothingness.

He could shove Saito off a cliff or high building, of course, which would eliminate the need for Dom to look into Saito’s eyes. But the city is gone, faded, torn apart. 

And how will Saito wake up? Will he recall that he has a phone call to make, or will he be stuck as a child? If he does not choose to wake up voluntarily, knowing what he is leaving behind and returning to, Dom doesn’t know who he will be waking up beside. 

He sighs. He has made that mistake once before, and just the thought of Mal sends a pang of sickness through Dom. 

He won’t make it again. 

 

 

 _Saito knocks_ on his door. Dom looks up and finds the young man peering in. 

“There is food,” Saito says. His gaze is calm, blankly assessing Dom. 

Somehow, Dom senses that he is forgiven for his outburst earlier. He rolls off the bed and to his feet. He considers putting on shoes, then shrugs off the impulse. This is a Japanese house. He’s surprised Saito hasn’t yet chastised him for wearing shoes and tramping around. 

He follows Saito down the hall and stairs and into the dining room. Every lantern hanging from the ceiling is lit, filling the room with golden light. Dom walks to the table and slides into a chair set in front of a deep, covered bowl with steam rising from its edges. 

He lifts the ceramic cover and peers inside. Warm golden broth heaped with green leaves and seafood greets his eyes. It smells wonderful, and Dom realizes that he’s hungry, so hungry, and he hasn’t eaten anything like this in years. Even awake he tends to skimp on meals, only eating what is necessary when it is necessary. This, though, is real food. 

The bowl scrapes against the table as he pulls it close, lifts the spoon, and slurps up the broth. He takes another mouthful, and then another. He glances up. Saito is watching him, slowing sipping at spoonfuls taken from his own bowl, a kind of smirk curving at the corners of his mouth. 

“You worry too much, Dom,” he says. “You should stop fighting against all this and stay with me,” he continues, and Dom pushes the bowl away regretfully.

His chewing slows down now that he is past the first bites, now that he has warmth in his stomach and Saito’s cool gaze on him. Saito is right. He does worry too much, but not at the moment. The soup is filling him up, warming him from the inside, and giving him the confidence to say once he has finished eating,

“I’d like to tell you a story.”

Saito’s soft amusement disappears. Dom leans forward. 

“Not one about dreams this time. This is a story about a friend of mine I haven’t seen in a long time; I want to tell you about him.”

Saito sets his spoon down. It clinks against the side of the bowl and he leans back. “Tell me about your friend,” he says, tone wary.

“It began with my work,” Dom begins, settling back in his seat and folding his hands in his lap. “I’ve told you I was a thief. I didn’t tell you that I was a very good one, almost famous. Very rich individuals hired me to steal from their competitors. And so one time I was hired to steal from a very powerful man.”

He pauses, thinking about how to edit his memories – how he can tell this story to Saito without him realizing who he is speaking about. “It doesn’t matter what I was hired to steal, or why. I broke into the man’s home to steal his most prized possessions. The man was hosting a party, and while he was distracted I found his safe, opened it, and stole what I’d been hired to. And then…”

The details distract him and are hard to push away. He can’t forget the curve of Mal’s shoulder as she lifted the gun and the twist of pain on Arthur’s face. “I was caught. The man caught me trying to leave, and he demanded an explanation. I lied to him, made up some story about why I was there. I’m a very good liar, when I try to be, you know.”

He glances up. Saito is leaning forward, gaze intense.

“But the man knew that I was lying, that I’d stolen his secrets. In response he was…kind. I suppose. He was not cruel, he did not call the police or have his own men deal with me. He told me that I’d impressed him and that he would like me to work for him. He was very persuasive, and so I agreed.”

Dom reaches out with barely a thought and lifts a glass of water off the table that hadn’t been there an instant before. He sips to clear his throat. “This man was different than any other I had worked for. He did not pay me and leave me to my work – he made himself part of my world. He included himself in my process and made himself useful – indispensably so.”

Dom’s words slow and stop. He loses enthusiasm for the story as it comes to an end. He is skirting so many details and facts that it sickens him. Hopefully it is enough to ring a chord in Saito and draw out some half-forgotten memories. He forces himself towards the end.

“I grew to care for this man, and though he was not familiar with my work I promised to protect him and teach him. And then I lost him, and I’ve been searching for him since.” He takes another sip of the water.

When he looks at Saito he sees that the young man is calm, his face still and gaze sharp. “What was this man’s name?” he asks. His fingers, interlaced on the tabletop, clench until they turn white at the knuckles. 

Dom searches Saito’s face for a further hint, but finds nothing. 

He decides to damn himself. “It’s you, Saito. You were that man.”

Saito’s head falls into his hands and when his voice comes out it’s muffled, despairing. “Why? Why would you tell me this…” He trails out off, and Dom wonders whether he hesitates because he truly can’t find the words, or whether he is avoiding calling Dom a liar. 

“Because I love…” _my children_. His last words come out only in his mind as a physical pain rises up within him, cutting off his voice. _I would do anything for them_ , he whispers to himself. _Anything to return to them._

Saito is on his feet and around the table before Dom can find his voice. He perches on the end arm of the chair and leans forward. “Say it again,” he says. 

Dom is out of his depth. He is floundering and confused, unsure where Saito’s passionate plea has come from. He stares at the press of Saito’s thin lips, the wideness of his eyes and the quick rise and fall of his breast, and wonders how he could have fallen so far, so quickly. 

And then Saito is kissing him, falling forward off the arm and into his lap, and Dom is so startled that all he can feel for a moment are Saito’s fingers wrapping around his collar, his ass sinking into Dom’s thighs, and the hot puff of his breath on Dom’s cheek. He’s trapped. He wants to pull away, but is caught between Saito and the chair back and all he manages is a muffled groan. 

He grasps Saito’s arms but doesn’t push him away. He leave his hand there, his fingers’ grip tightening and tightening and the kiss grows longer and he forgets to breathe. 

The thing is, the kiss is simple. Saito kisses him closed-mouthed, almost chaste. All Dom feels is the pressure of lips and body against his own. Saito’s tense desperation and feverish need are palpable. Dom doesn’t quite know how to answer it. 

He pulls his hands away from Saito’s arms and reaches up. His fingers thread through Saito’s hair, gentle, neither pushing nor pulling. He just holds Saito close until their lips part and he moves back. Dom cracks open eyes he doesn’t remember closing. 

The golden light spilling from glass lamps glints in Saito’s eyes, giving him a kind of fevered glow that fits him. He looks mad, determined, and wild. 

“You must stay.”

  


 

 

 

 

 

 

_He walks away._ Away from the house, scrambling down crumbling cliffs and onto sand. He walks down to the sea where the waves end, and he crouches. Dom reaches out for the water and lets it foam past his fingers.

Here Limbo doesn’t feel like fabric. It is like an immaterial slinky, bouncing and curling through his hands. He cannot quite grasp the structure of the house behind him. All he knows is that Limbo stretches on forever in all directions, and that he just might be at the very center. 

He stands and glances up into the sky, missing the cries of seagulls. Limbo is always flawed. It is a cold and lifeless place. He digs his heels into the wet sand.

He can’t stay. The weight of the gun sits heavy on him, and he reaches back to touch the cool metal of it. He pulls his hand away. 

 

 

 _He must_ appear aroused or otherwise transfixed. Dom can’t stop staring as Saito leans forward again and kisses him, softer this time. It is less of an attack and more a caress. Dom opens, kisses Saito deeply and fully. 

Saito groans and his hands twine around Dom’s arms, his shoulder, until it feels like he has too many limbs and is using every one to grab Dom and hold him still. He feels caged. 

He shoves his hand past Saito and by some miracle catches the arm of the chair, an anchor. He pulls himself forward, away from the chair back. Saito shifts and Dom’s neck cricks backwards, uncomfortable, but the way Saito hisses and twists, fingers digging into his shoulders like claws and tongue desperate and hot, makes it bearable. He pushes Saito back and away. 

The young man – for he is young, so slim and flushed, so broken – leans towards Dom. 

“Wait,” Dom whispers, and his voice is a rasp. He tries to sound strong, but is afraid he sounds pleading instead. 

“No,” Saito says, unaccustomed to being denied, and dives back in. 

Dom smiles into the kiss. 

 

 

 _He has pulled the gun_ from his waistband. It won’t stay put away, now. His other hand is clenched around the cold top in his pocket, useless now that all that lies beneath his feet is sand. He couldn’t spin it now if he tried. 

He walks back to the house, and the sand crackles beneath his feet. He is determined, refusing to think of anything but his goal. Waking up, opening his eyes, returning to reality. 

The brisk breeze sweeping in from the sea seems suddenly cold. He grips the gun more tightly and presses it against his thigh. 

 

 

 _He presses Saito into the mattress._ He isn’t sure how they got to be in the bedroom, whether by their own power or by Limbo’s. It is all beginning to blur with Saito’s kisses, the sudden hitches of his hips against Dom’s (each one surprising and shiver-inducing), the feel of his hair in Dom’s fingers. He wants this, badly, he doesn’t want it to end. Saito moans and twists against Dom and Dom sneaks a hand under his shirt, up against hot skin. 

Dom arches, hips moving down and pushing Saito into the sheets, and he feels something at the small of his back. He doesn’t register it, really, just keeps moving. Saito hooks a leg around his and Dom goes lower. He’s running out of breath and that something is _digging_ into his spine. 

He pulls away from the kiss and Saito murmurs, burying his face into Dom’s neck and biting, at first gently and then harder, until Dom pants. Saito begins working his way down Dom’s neck, nimble fingers working at the buttons of his shirt. 

Holding the thought in his mind, Dom reaches back and rips the hard object away from his back and knows, the instant he touches it, what it is. The gun. His gun, which could free them both this very instant. All he has do is kill Saito. 

As the cold thought of reality pours over Dom, his arousal fades. He snakes a hand between them and shoves Saito down against the bed. He hits the mattress with a sharp, choked breath. His hair is tousled and his lips swollen. 

And Dom thinks of his children, his dead wife. He holds the muzzle of the gun to Saito’s head and bites down hard on his lips. Where are the line at the corners of his eyes and grim set to his mouth? Where is that fathomless, unforgiving glint in his eyes?

Right now, they can wake up, _now_. He pulls the trigger.

 

 

 _The shot echoes_ through the house. Saito stares at him, frozen like a doe in the middle of a highway, a blackened, smoking hole burning through the pillow next to his head. Dom runs. 

 

 

 

 _He passes_ through a desert, a forest, and a sea, all too briefly. He is always alone. He finds no hint of Saito, not that he is really looking. He wanders, his feet moving forward though his brain remains caught in a loop of Saito’s eyes and lips, the burnt hole that a bullet carved. 

And eventually, like a thousand times before, he comes back to the city. 

It looks the same, as if he never tore it down and destroyed it within the dream. The skyscrapers glisten, silver windows like the scale of fishes, and the tiny houses between them look like toys. In a way, they are toys; relics of his past and Mal’s, strewn carelessly across the landscape. 

Walking, he doesn’t see the city coming – he doesn’t think about it, not consciously. He glances down at his feet, still following a nameless road through nowhere, and when he looks up the city has risen there, looming and great and all around him. 

Dom spins. He reaches out for Limbo and there it is, familiar as the back of his hand, surrounding him. It is not his city recreated, but the same city that they built together, as if when he uncreated it he’d done absolutely nothing but hidden the city from his own sight. Limbo had taken the city away and stored it for another time. 

He straightens, feeling indignant for the first time in ages. He pushes away the thought that Limbo has secrets, and his control over it is merely a sham. 

He strides through the city, and though he means to walk right back out again, Dom finds himself pausing at the first house he passes, stopping to peer through the windows. It is one of Mal’s – the summerhouse she’d stayed at for five years when she had been a teenager – painstakingly recreated. He can see the damage wrought by sea salt upon the wood shingles from here. 

He walks up the short path and peers through the windows, then pushes the front door open and walks inside. He has been inside this house maybe once, when Mal showed him all of her memories, and he showed her his. He has no associations with the place. He sees no evidence of Mal here. It is a vague, uncharted place. 

He settles onto the sofa, content. It is homey and warm inside, comforting. He finds a soft smile curling across his face and a weight he had almost forgotten lifting from his heart. The tension slips from his shoulders and he looks around, gaze trailing across the small objects and bare walls. He feels the beginnings of hunger stirring within.

He catches a glimpse of himself in a mirror and stops.

Deep shadows ring his eyes. His skin looks pale and loose, and his hair is ragged. His eyes are bleached, turned icy blue. It is both sickening and chilling. 

When had he lost himself, turned old and mad? He raises a hand and touches his cheek, barely feeling the pressure. He thinks back over the past few (weeks, months, days, how long had it been?) of wandering, and a chill runs through him. 

His hunger vanishes. He watches his fingers tremble in the glass and realizes that he is a broken man, completely shattered. He wrenches his gaze away from those pale, terrifying eyes, and buries his face in his hands. 

He clenches his hair and pulls, but even the pain and the soft wetness of blood on his scalp cannot distract him. 

 

 

 

 _The dreams_ , it has to have been the dreams. Dom turns to look around him, and all he sees is dreams. They surround him like the web of a spider, and he is the insect caught. He _hates_ it. 

He wants to lash out and tear Limbo to shreds, send himself screaming back to reality through an act of violence that borders tenuously on masochism. He wants to rip his dreams, and perhaps his mind, apart. 

He does not. Dom stands still in the summerhouse, letting the dream silently breathe around him, growing and changing without his will. Slowly, the anger within him ebbs away to nothing, and though when he looks up the figure in the mirror is still bleached and shattered, he looks calm.

He feels calm, and almost contented. He reaches up and brushes his hair back into place, healing the wound in his scalp with a touch. His fingers trail down his neck and over the collar of his shirt, wiping away the blood that had gathered there. 

A wisp of his thoughts touches Limbo, his eyes slip closed, and Dom allows Limbo to move against him. He does not seize its threads, but feels the warp and weft of it. It is heavy, a presence not only in his mind but also on the tip of his tongue. The darkness behind his lids turns to dazzling colors, and something begins to grow within Dom, or reawaken. 

A smile crosses his lips. These dreams are so beautiful; he loves them. He loves their feel and their vigor, their perfection and the way they make him feel. 

He would not give this up for anything, not even, he realizes with some surprise, his children. He wants to go home. He wants to see his children again, clutch them to his chest and feel their soft hair on his cheek. But he wants dreams just as badly, and no matter what, he knows he will always return to them. 

He has in the past, despite all common sense. He kept dreaming when Mal was hunting him. He continued dreaming even when every time he smelled the soft, tangy-sweet scent of somnacin, he remembered the unstoppable fall of Mal’s body, that graceful leap that he had caused and could do nothing to stop. 

And yet he loves this. He inhales and opens his eyes. Limbo, the summerhouse, glitters around him. He reaches behind him and brushes his worn leather jacket back. He pulls the gun from his waistband and pulls it around in front of him. 

He tilts it and reaches out, sliding a hand over the mechanisms as he _click, click_ runs through them, finding no grains of sand or salt in the delicate springs and slides. He checks the safety and at the soft thud that shows him the guns is loaded, he hefts its weight in his hand and feels his heart begin to beat faster. 

He smiles. 

 

 

 

 _Dom feels_ lighter, freer. The gun digs into the small of his back, but he doesn’t mind the discomfort. He shifts into it. And exhales. 

He turns and walks through the front door of the summerhouse and the city melts into mist around him. It drifts up and disappears into the whiteness of the sky and he walks through the nothingness. He pauses.

His thoughts reach out and he finds that the city is gone. He searches for a moment more, but it is truly destroyed this time. It hasn’t vanished only from his mind, but from Limbo entire. He doesn’t think it will be coming back. Something within him aches at the loss, but most of him is glad. It’s over then, finally done. He can move on and finish this dream once and for all. And then maybe start another one. 

Between one step and the next Limbo shifts to accommodate his desires, a half spin and inversion that should be dizzying to Dom but is not, and he finds himself standing on the front porch of a grand house, with a party going on inside. 

The windows blaze with light and Dom hears laughter within. He reaches out and pushes the door open, glad to find it unlocked. He is quiet as he steps inside, but the projections notice him, and simultaneously a room filled with men in suits and women in slim gowns turns to look at him. He lifts his chin. 

Across the room, Dom sees heads begin to shift, yellow light playing across their dark hair. The sea parts, and Saito strides forward. 

There are new lines in his face and Dom thinks he sees a strand of gray glinting in his hair. Yet the look of pure shock on his face – eyes so wide and lips parted – is very young and _very_ satisfying.

“You…” Saito whispers, and Dom steps forward. Saito tenses, taking a half step back. 

“I haven’t come to hurt you,” Dom says, and then reconsiders. “I came because I needed to see you.”

“Why? What do you need?” Saito asks, jaw tight and voice firm. 

“Didn’t I say?” Dom responds. “You.”

He is pleasantly aware of Saito’s surprise at the conversation – truthfully, Dom isn’t paying much attention to what he is saying. He lets his voice and mind wander as he steps slowly closer to Saito, close enough so that he can shoot him without the projections getting into the way. 

Saito begins to relax minutely, and his wine glass drops low to his side. He opens his mouth and then closes it quickly. Dom reaches back carefully for the gun, and in a flash Saito is darting back into the crowd again. Dom does not miss the smothered flash of panic in his eyes. He jumps forward after him. 

The projections move to stop him, and the distance between he and Saito widens. Dom pulls the gun all the way around and drops one projection, then another, with barely a thought. He doesn’t hear the shots or the grunts of the projections as they die – all is silence around him. Saito runs, turning and glancing back with increasing frequency. He seems unwilling to turn his back to Dom, and Dom silently applauds his caution, as it makes him easier to find in the sea of faces that look suddenly too similar. 

He fires at Saito, but misses, and a projection falls in his place. 

They are coming close now, reaching out for Dom. Quite sickeningly he remembers that one instance in which he was torn apart – how simultaneously horrifying and sudden it had been – and knows that he has no wish to repeat the experience. Besides, were he to die here he would wake, and the entire search for Saito would be meaningless. 

His gun kicks back as he fires again and again, bruising the muscles of his hand and wrist. The projections nearest him hit the floor with chilling thuds, and Dom conjures up more ammunition with a quick touch to the weft of Limbo; he gives up the chase for Saito. He turns and runs, veering away from the front door (blocked by projections) and sprinting up the wide stairway in the center of the hall. It had been a long shot anyway – he certainly isn’t going to press his luck. 

At the first landing he turns, rushing up another flight as the projections pursue him in single-minded silence. He finds himself laughing, a low, harsh cough. He casts back over his shoulder and reaches a second landing, turns. 

His breathing is heavy; he is not out of shape but far from inhuman. He reaches out and grabs the slim railing, hauling himself up. He fairly stumbles past the third landing, thighs burning, when he stops and turns fully back, grinning. With a trembling hand, he pulls the gun back and releases his grip on it, sliding its hot muzzle into the waistband of his pants. 

The projections keep moving and moving, as they reach the third landing and step past it into empty air and tumble away. Dom smiles at them from a sudden height. He’s been wanting to try this trick of Arthur’s forever. Very clever, that. 

The projections mill around, searching for a way up to Dom, but he holds Limbo firmly in his grasp and keeps the shape of the stairs firmly knotted, twisted into Penrose irrationality. 

He shrugs his jacket into place and walks up the last few steps to the second floor. This part of the house is silent. Gaze sharp, he looks around for projections but finds none. He flexes his fingers into readiness anyway. 

Down the hall to his left, a door creaks. Dom’s head whips around and he takes a step before he can think. He stops and reconsiders. Saito is afraid of him, and who knows what he might conjure up in this state if Dom were to chase him down now. 

He considers briefly before selecting another trick from his repertoire – well, something more of Eames’ specialty, though Dom has tried his hand at it more than once. He doesn’t want to appear threatening. He wants to seem normal, unassuming, someone who could have been a product of Saito’s own mind. Most of all, he wants to be anyone but himself.

He straightens his jacket and steps down the hall, slimmer and sharper, heading for Saito’s door. 

 

 

 _Saito_ is the one who appears old now, and it saddens Dom to see him so. He leans against the wall next to the window, head bowed and shoulders hunched. The sun is setting, and the light silhouetting him is dim. Dom’s excitement and apprehension dies at the sight of him. 

He steps into the room and clears his throat. “Are you all right?”

Saito turns quickly, his face already under control and expressionless. His muscles tighten, though, revealing his surprise. He unwinds slightly as he sees he does not recognize the man in the doorway, and Dom hides his pleasure in the fact behind a friendly smile. 

He walks in and sits on the edge of the perfectly made bed. It is stiff and barely dips under his weight. “You look tired,” Dom says, marveling that even his voice sounds like Arthur’s – soft and tightly coiled. 

Saito takes steps towards him, and then stops. “I am,” he says, voice low. 

Dom swallows. “Is it…about him?”

“I wish he would stop following me,” Saito says. “He should leave me alone, let me live my life.”

“I understand,” Dom replies, and it is the utter truth. He understands completely, the unconquerable desire to live one’s own life. He has never felt so far from it. 

Saito stops a few feet from him, eyes shadowed. Dom knows he won’t cross the distance himself. 

“That man…” Dom begins, and then stops, suddenly unsure of himself. What can he say? How does he conduct this roundabout, odd conversation about himself? Saito does not give him time to think. (He never does.)

“The man has followed me my entire life,” Saito says. “I cannot remember a time when he was not there. At first, he was my friend, but now he tries to kill me. He almost succeeded once.”

“Why did he change?”

“I do not know. I never understood it.”

“Surely there must have been some reason for the shift,” Dom prompts, leaning back on his hands and gazing up. He feels his jacket grow momentarily heavier, threatening to turn to leather, and his lips tighten as he forces it back into its rigidly tailored form. 

Saito’s silence is so long that Dom wonders if he should try another form, find someone else that Saito would trust more, and then he speaks. 

“He talks about dreams. I think that he has been crazy for a long time. Every time I speak with him, he tries to convince me that my life is just a dream, and that I am not alive at all. It is preposterous.”

“And does he have evidence?”

“Yes,” Saito bites out. “But his evidence is nothing more than everyday life – the locations that are not where you expect them to be, the phantom sensations that sometimes sneak upon you, the memories that lurk in the back of your mind but don’t fit in with your life. These things are normal, are they not?”

His tone comes just short of pleading and he finally steps forward, sitting down on the edge of the bed. Dom looks over at him, thinking, _so close, so close._ He reaches across Saito and for the first time, Saito’s gaze meets his own. 

He presses his fingertips into Saito’s shoulder, an echo of their first time, gently so gently, barely brushing the skin under his shirt and jacket. Saito jolts as if plunged into icy water and sucks in a deep, pained breath. 

“So you do remember,” Dom whispers, and in return Saito asks,

“What?”

“Dying,” Dom responds, and Saito reacts faster than Dom can see. 

He is lying on his back, winded and stunned, trying desperately to think through what has just happened as Saito crouches next to him in a rush and says, “It is _you_ ,” and Dom knows that his forgery has shattered. The gun digs into the small of his back. 

Saito wraps his hands around Dom’s throat. “You keep coming back for me, trying to kill me. Did you ever speak one word of truth to me?”

Dom’s vision is swimming, reeling. He kicks against the floor and pries at Saito’s finger, but he can’t budge them. “Always,” he chokes out. He _cannot_ die. 

He claws at the floor and Limbo, wrenching at it and managing to tilt the universe. Caught by surprise, Saito tumbles off him. Dom stumbles to his feet and reaches behind himself for the gun. He pulls it from his waistband but his hands are numb, not working properly. He fumbles at the trigger and by the time he grasps it, cursing, the world has righted itself and Saito is lunging for him, shoving him against the wall. The impact drives the breath from Dom as he brings the gun up, only to have Saito dive forward, slamming his head into Dom’s. 

Dom hisses, pain exploding through his skull and his vision blackening for an instant. Dimly, he feels Saito rip the gun away. Dom reaches out to Limbo but Saito has his forearm across Dom’s throat and he can’t think. 

Saito leans forward, presses his lips to the skin under Dom’s ear, and speaks. “You are a thief and a liar. You have steadfastly tried to destroy my life when all I did was care for you. You have repeatedly betrayed me and you have torn this world apart with your lies. So I exile you. You are not allowed back here, or anywhere in this world. Any who sees you will cast you out; you will wander forever until you die. If you beg my forgiveness now I might accept and let you stay. Will you apologize?”

The words jolt through Dom. He has apologized before – but now? Never. In answer he tears the threads of Limbo apart and brings the gun sailing across the room to smack into his open palm. 

Saito snarls and flash of pain flits through his eyes as he wrenches Dom sideways, shoving him back farther, through the wall, no, through the window, until he is the only thing keeping Dom in the house. The crash of surf on the cliffs echoes below them. 

Saito’s hands are on his collar and the fabric digs into the back of his neck. Dom gasps for breath and tries to raise his hand, his gun, but cannot; his world is spinning. 

“I will never forgive you,” Saito says, and the last thing that Dom sees as Saito shoves him out of the window and sends him spinning, plummeting, are the shadows of the projections in the room behind Saito, watching silently.

Dom open his mouth to shriek, opens his mind to Limbo, but the fall is too fast. He hits the roiling water with a tremendous concussion that resounds through him, sending the gun drifting away and numbness flooding him. He expects, dimly, to smash against rocks at any moment, but does not. 

The tide carries him out, away from shore and Saito, and he feels water filling his lungs. He will not die here; not now, with his task unfinished. He _cannot_.

 

 

 _The sea_ holds Dom for a very long time, until he forgets what it is to walk, or breathe, or see the sun. His memories begin to fade and blur, turning as cerulean and transparent as the water. He does not die, because he does not allow himself to. He forgets it all except for a soft sense of urgency and yearning, a guilt that festers in his stomach and forces him to reach out for land every time he drifts close; always, it pushes him away as if saying, _not yet, you are not allowed here_. He wishes he could remember why. 

 

 

 

 _He wakes_ on the beach, facedown and sand grinding between his teeth, to the sensation of someone lifting up his jacket. His fingers dig into the sand, but he is too weak to move. 

Something (cold metal) is wedged into his waistband where the air is rushing in; he thinks desperately, but a hand slips around the object and pulls it away from him, and then he forgets what he was thinking about. His jacket drops backs down against his skin with a soft slap. 

Hands burrow into the sand under his arms, fingers wrap round his muscles, and the pads of those fingers dig into his arms, wrenching him away from the earth and up into the air. His head lolls and eyelids flutter. The sun is bright and he frowns, screwing his eyes shut and willing it away. It doesn’t go though, and he wonders whether he has lost his touch. 

What touch? And how has he lost it?

They are dragging him now; his shoulders throb and he feels the tips of his shoes digging in deep. He blinks and the light pulses through his eyes, but he forces his eyes open. What has he forgotten?

The answer comes easily: everything. 

He reaches up, twisting, and grasps the arms that hold him. He reaches out for a clue, something to guide his thoughts and help him find what he has lost. A name, that is a good way to begin. What was his name? 

He shakes his head and water flies from his hair, dripping onto his lips. It is salty. He was in the sea. He moves a leg and steps forward, halts their progress and turns back to look behind him. The water is a dark, steely blue, stretching on towards the horizon and turning grey in the distance. The crashing of waves is loud in his ears, a veritable roar, and he flinches back and against one of the men who had been carrying him. 

_So, you can walk_ , the man with dark hair says in a strange language – Japanese, his dulled mind supplies, though the word means nothing to him – and yet he understand every word. _Come, Dominic Cobb, Saito-domo wishes to see you._

Dominic Cobb. As the men drag him, stumbling, up the rocks towards the large house that Dom is only now glimpsing on the cliff above him, he wonders at his name. Dominic Cobb is right, it fits him. It rings true and holds power over him. How did these men know his name when even he did not?

He falls to his knees more than once, urged on by their fingertips and quick glances, but he does not stop. 

 

 

 

 _His reflection is clear_ in the polished wood of the tabletop. He cannot stop staring at it. His face is soft and pale, his hair stringy and his eyes pale. The gold light from the lanterns hanging above surrounds him like a halo. 

He looks up at the old man at the other end of the table. One of the younger men sets a bowl of steaming rice in front of Dom, and he inhales the scent of it greedily. It takes him a long moment to remember that this food is not a thing only for smelling, but for eating as well. He reaches out and grasps the spoon half buried in the rice and forces the trembling in his hands away. He steels himself for the first bite.

His eyes drift up again to the old man. His eyes are shadowed, watching Dom. He is achingly familiar. He converses quietly with the younger men; Dom could listen if he wanted to, but at the moment he wants to respect the man’s privacy. 

He looks back down at the rice and takes a bite. Then another. And then, suddenly the bowl is cleaned and Dom is licking the spoon. He cannot remember the eating. Chilled, he places the spoon down and pushes the bowl away. 

The old man is speaking to him. Asking a question. “Are you here to kill me?”

English, Dom’s brain supplies, and then stumbles. Is he? He scours his thoughts, but they offer him no clues. He does not want to kill anyone at all. 

“No,” he replies, voice hoarse and rough, unrecognizable.

The barest smile crosses the old man’s face – Saito, he suddenly recalls, the man’s name is Saito – and it strike Dom to the heart. 

“Are you sure?” he asks, and Dom blinks in response. He is sure of nothing.

There is a gun lying next to the man’s hand, as well a shining metal top. Saito reaches out for the top and Dom fights the urge to bolt from his seat and take that top back – it is his and Saito should not be touching it. 

With a flick of still-nimble fingers, Saito sends the top spinning, whirling, doubled in the reflection of polished wood. 

He remembers, then, little things: the dark curl of Mal’s hair, bright seashells on a beach, a young boy with wide eyes. He remembers a dark hole burnt through bedding and his own sickening satisfaction and he buries his face in his hands, raking his fingers through his hair and glancing up with a pained expression. 

Saito is watching the top. “I have been waiting for you,” he says, “for a very long time.”

Dom swallows. “You cast me out,” he says, and though his memories are still shaky, he knows that it is true. “You wanted me gone.”

“And I said that if I forgave you…” Saito snatches the top from the table and clutches it in his fist. Dom swallows at the sensation. “I forgave you a long time ago, my Thief. Why did it take you so long to return?”

The projections have vanished, leaving them alone, and Dom hates them for it. He does not want to be left alone here with his own failures. 

“I have been searching,” he says finally. “You’re a hard man to find.”

Silence falls between them.

“You once told me that we would be old men together.”

Dom is surprised. He had said those words once, but before Limbo, long ago. 

“I seem to recall that,” Saito says, “from…” He trails off. 

“From a half-remembered dream?” Dom prompts, hoping beyond all hope. 

“Yes,” Saito says, eyes lighting as he looks up at Dom and straightens slightly. 

Now is his chance. Dom leans forward, eager to get the words out now that Saito is finally listening. “I have been trying to tell you…I came back to tell you…and I’ve been trying for a very long time to show you…” Saito has hated him and feared him for so long, it has made Dom clumsy. He can’t explain. He pushes through the pain and speaks.

“This world is not real.”

Saito does not react. His gaze is steady and dark, and he does not reject the idea. “I have been waiting to die alone,” he says, and Dom immediately pushes back from the table. 

His legs are still unsteady, but they are enough – he walks down the length of the table to Saito and leans against the table next to him. He looks up at Dom, and though his face and body are old, so old, his eyes still sparkle, and as Dom lays his hand on Saito’s arm, his eyes go wide again. Dom can’t help a small smile. 

He reaches out and places his other hand on the gun. It scrapes as it comes off the table. 

Saito’s eyes dart to it, and his hands slip below the table to rest in his lap. “A leap of faith,” he says. 

“Yes,” Dom replies, raising his hand from Saito’s arm and threading it through his thin hair. Then, because he cannot stop himself, he lean forward and presses a kiss to Saito’s lips, and closes his eyes. 

He raises the gun, lets the shot reverberate through him, and doesn’t open them again, letting them both fall upward through darkness. 

 

 

 _Dom’s neck is weak_ and his head lolls to the side. His vision blurs for a long moment, and he blinks several times before he can make out Ariadne, tense in her first class seat, gaze intent on him. Dom pushes himself up slightly and the seat moves with him. He watches her relax minutely.

Irresistibly, he gravitates towards Saito. His gaze meets the other man’s, dark and confused, and Dom doesn’t know what to say. He flexes his fingers against the arm rest and feels the tube from the PASIV throb in his arm. Unthinkingly, he licks his lips. 

So this is reality. It has been so long that Dom had forgotten how it feels, forgotten the weight of it on his senses. It is cloying and distracting, when all Dom wants to do is move over to Saito and crouch next to him, talk to him. 

He wants that wide-eyed boy at his feet again, laughing and smiling. He wants the young man whose eyes had glimmered in the light of a thousand candles, and whose kisses had tasted like salt and fire. 

He flushes, wants to look away, but doesn’t. 

Saito’s gaze has not wavered, and as Dom watches him he suddenly jerks, blinking, and sits up straight. He looks over to the phone attached to the back of the seat in front of him and lifts it. His eyes return to Dom. 

His children, oh, he had almost forgotten. Dom’s stomach flips. 

He tears his gaze away, then, and begins removing the PASIV from his arm. Later, he will regret looking away, because by the time he looks back the plane has landed and Saito is gone, and Dom will not see him again. 

 

 

 _He returns_ home, follows Miles to the car waiting outside the airport, and watches the city turn into suburbs before they finally pull up in front of the house he has not been near in over a year. For a few long moments, he stares at it. 

Then he opens the door and walks up the front steps, through the house to his children. 

“Dad!” Phillipa cries, shrieking and laughing as she runs towards him. She bounds into his arms and Dom holds her close. 

James follows his sister more slowly, cautious in his steps. Dom looks down at him, just as unsure but knowing that he has to make the first move here: he is the adult. 

Then Phillipa fairly shouts in his ear, “What gifts did you bring me?” and Dom bursts out laughing and kisses her cheek. 

He finds the strength to smile down at his son and crouches, bringing them both close to his cheek as Phillipa prattles on and James presses his cheek to his father’s and whispers in Dom’s ear, “Hello, Dad.”

Dom knows he has made the right choice. He stops taking jobs and keeps Arthur’s name programmed into his phone only so that he’ll know which calls to avoid. When he lies down at night he lies very still, dreading the moment he will fall asleep and into dreams. He never dreams, though. 

Every night it seems as if Dom closes his eyes and then wakes up an instant later, and the blankness that has forced the dreams from his mind is so much more terrible than Limbo ever was. 

He begins drinking coffee at night, and dark circles form under his eyes. 

After two weeks, Miles leaves and Dom is left alone with his children. Even then, he doesn’t truly have them back, because they leave every day for school and Dom is left in a house that is far too big for him and holds too many memories. 

He checks his bank accounts – all of them – at least three times a week, and considers getting a new job despite the fact that he has a fairly filthy amount of money saved. He always ends up sighing, closing out the internet, and deleting the missed calls from his phone. 

He goes to the library, but all the books seem unimaginative and repetitive. Often now, his children come home from school to find him sprawled on the couch, a barely touched novel opened on his lap, fast asleep. 

 

 

 _On Thursdays_ , Dom goes grocery shopping because the stores are quiet and he enjoys wandering the aisles. He can’t help imagining the private lives of the other shoppers, and he misses Mal desperately as he does this because they would always speculate together, making up tales about the affairs, arguments, and shopping lists of those around them. It is a dull, old pain, though, and sometimes he can smile at the memories, now.

He walks back into the house with bags balanced between his arms and has them pushed halfway onto the kitchen counter before he stops dead, plunges his hand into his pocket and pulls out the metal top. 

It skids across the counter before toppling over, and Dom stares at Saito, casually perched on his sofa, in shock. 

“You are not taking calls, I believe,” Saito says, voice low, and a shiver runs through Dom. He is clad in a dark suit, perfectly tailored and professional, and immensely appealing. His eyes are dark, entrancing. 

Dom looks away. 

“No, I can’t…” he begins, and then stops. He listens to Saito stand and walk towards him. He grips the edge of the counter to keep himself in place and looks up, daring Saito to keep moving. The man slows. 

“I never received any thanks from you,” Saito says, and Dom frowns.

“Thanks?”

“For this,” Saito saying, gesturing at the house around them. 

Dom’s eyes widen in understanding. Saito had left the plane so quickly after it had landed, and Dom had paused for just too long, and he had never said thank you for everything that Saito had done for him. 

“Thank you,” he says honestly. He looks down at his hand in wonder as it reaches out and rests on top of Saito’s. 

“Why…” he begins, and then clears his throat. “Why else did you come? You can’t have tracked me down just to get my thanks.”

“You cannot believe that I would give up so easily after reaching your voicemail.”

That draws a laugh from Dom, and he admits, “No.” After everything that they have been through, Dom doesn’t think Saito would give up for anything. 

A long silence stretches between them. Neither one of the them moves away and Dom looks up at the lines around Saito’s mouth and in the corner of his eyes. He has to force his hand to his side so that he doesn’t touch them. 

“I have a job for you.”

Dom isn’t surprised. He has been considering this moment himself – it’s why he has been avoiding all calls and acting like a hermit in his own home. He _wants_ to dream again. He wants to shape the fabric of the mind and feel the thrill of a successful heist. He wants to feel his heartbeat in his mouth and look at the man across from him and know that he is feeling the same thing. 

But to have all this, he will have to leave his children again. 

After all this time, he doesn’t have to think about his answer for a second. 

“Tell me,” he says. Saito smiles at him, eyes lighting up, obviously thrilled. 

“Later,” he replies, and pulls his hand from under Dom’s. 

Dom does not have time to mourn the loss of the touch before Saito’s fingers are on his neck, moving up and threading through his hair. _Damned_ , whispers his thoughts, and he smiles. He will damn himself to the tenth circle for this feeling, this sensation of flying apart with joy and the limitless dreaming he will return to, oh so soon.

“Later,” Dom whispers, and allows himself to be drawn forward.


End file.
